National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are the Intelligence Community’s (IC) most authoritative written judgments on national security issues and designed to help US civilian and military leaders develop policies to protect US national security interests. NIEs usually provide information on the current state of play but are primarily “estimative”-that is, they make judgments about the likely course of future events and identify the implications for US policy.

A Crucial Estimate Relived, Sherman Kent, Studies in Intelligence, Spring 1964 — a reevaluation of the 1962 NIE proclaiming the Soviet Union would not put offensive weapons in Cuba.

The National Intelligence Council Collection — hundreds of declassified National Intelligence Estimates and other publications produced by the National Intelligence Council or its predecessor organizations, the Office of National Estimates and the Office of Reports and Estimates.

Excerpts from the Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 10-41 “The Likelihood of Japanese Military Attack“, 4 December 1941 — This is a must-read for anyone interested in the collection and analysis of intelligence, about the most important NIE (more specifically, the most important NIE never made).

A Crucial Estimate Relived, Sherman Kent, Studies in Intelligence, Spring 1964 — A reevaluation of a 1962 NIE concluding that the Soviet Union would not put offensive weapons in Cuba.

National Intelligence Council (NIC) — Reporting to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and providing the President and senior policymakers with analyses of foreign policy issues that have been reviewed and coordinated throughout the Intelligence Community. They have published declassified NIEs (sold in print and on CD) about China (1948 – 1976), Vietnam (1948 – 1975), and Yugoslavia (1948 – 1990).

Browse the publications of the NIC (1946 – 1994) — Find declassified NIEs by using “National Intelligence Estimate” on the advanced search screen.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.

… Key NIE judgments on Iraq had previously been made public, beginning with a highly controversial October 2002 assessment warning that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. That estimate was later proved wrong, with no such weapons discovered in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, and the matter led to charges that the intelligence community had been politicized by the Bush administration.

“Overall, professional life is less complicated if nothing becomes public, and one doesn’t have to organize classified assessments always having in the back of one’s mind, ‘If this is ever leaked, how would it read’ ” in the news media, a former intelligence analyst said.

Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, October 2002 — a 28 page declassified version of the 90 page original. The Senate Intelligence Committee published an analysis of this and other pre-war intelligence (July 2004, 521 pages, the pdf is here on the CFR website).

.(8) Reports about science and technology by the JASON Defense Advisory Panel

JASON is an independent scientific advisory group established in 1960 to provide consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. JASON typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study, and has conducted studies under contract through The MITRE Corporation, to the Department of Defense (frequently DARPA and the U.S. Navy), the Department of Energy, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the FBI. Approximately half of the resulting JASON reports are unclassified.